Written by David E. Smith
GOOD NEWS: The Illinois House adjourned yesterday for the session (sine die). This means the ERA is effectively dead. Feminists and other Leftists will have to start from square one in the new session, which starts on January 14, 2015, with a slightly more conservative General Assembly.
We expect the Illinois Senate to adjourn today for the session. The Senate sponsor of a terrible divorce bill (worse than no-fault) will not call it for a vote because there are too many concerns with the bill.… Continue Reading
Written by David E. Smith
Governor-elect
Bruce Rauner (R) won a slim majority of the total votes and by 142,284 votes over incumbent
Patrick Quinn (D). Voter turnout was 49 percent, and compared to the 2010 gubernatorial election was down two percent, or 112,353 less voters in the 2014 election.
Incumbent Democratic Attorney General Lisa Madigan won decisively with 59 percent of the total vote, beating Republican challenger Paul Schimpf who received little support from the Republican establishment in Illinois.
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Written by Brian Hughes
November has been a terrible month for President Barack Obama, between his party losing control of the Senate and seemingly unending bad news for Obamacare.
The last few weeks were the worst stretch for his signature domestic initiative since the botched rollout of Obamacare in fall 2013, stoking doubts about whether the president can ever sell his healthcare policies to the American public.
First, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would hear arguments on the legality of Obamacare subsidies, a move that could gut the centerpiece of the Affordable Care Act.… Continue Reading
Written by Michael Lucci
Illinois’ sluggish jobs recovery is coming at a tremendous cost. For every post-recession job created in Illinois, nearly two people have enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps.
In the recession era, the number of Illinoisans dependent on food stamps has risen by 745,000. Without adequate job creation in the state, Illinois families have had no choice but to depend upon food stamps to put bread on the table.… Continue Reading
Written by Michale Medved
President Barack Obama’s proclamation of executive amnesty for illegal immigrants amounts to an outrageous power-grab and sets a dangerous trap for the GOP. Republicans can’t come across as stubborn defenders of the dysfunctional status quo: even if they rolled back every detail of the new White House initiative, our broken immigration system would still need sweeping reform.
Republicans should seize the initiative by passing their own reform bill, rather than fighting unpopular battles on the president’s terms.… Continue Reading
Written by Jay Cost
For responding to a president who defies his constitutional limits, Congress is said to possess four powers: to impeach, to defund, to investigate, and to withhold confirmation of nominees.
But there is a fifth recourse, which the new Republican Congress might consider in view of President Obama’s executive amnesty for illegal immigrants: the power to censure. In fact, censure could work in tandem with Congress’s other powers, helping the legislature make the moral case for responding to the president’s lawlessness.… Continue Reading
The only limit on the president’s power that he recognizes is political expediency.
Written by Andrew C. McCarthy
President Obama is an Alinskyite.
That assertion is not an epithet — well, not primarily. True, I would not describe someone I admired as an “Alinskyite.” Saul Alinsky was a loathsome figure — a radical statist who whose toxic brew of thoroughgoing deceit and brass-knuckles extortion (“direct action”) has become a part of mainstream politics. But in tying the president to the seminal community organizer whose theories and tactics so influenced him, my purpose is more to decode than to insult him.… Continue Reading
What the president means when he says America is an idea, not a bloodline
Written by Ira Straus
President Obama told us this week that we must legalize millions of illegal aliens because America is “a creed, an idea” — and is not what he calls “a bloodline.” The latter is an ugly term, hinting at Nazi-style racism, but what it caricatures is a more accurate view: that America is a concrete country with a concrete citizenry that has concrete habits, institutions, and mutual relations and obligations.… Continue Reading
Written by Russ Stewart
The outcome of Illinois’ gubernatorial race proves anew that any mother’s son can grow up to be governor, provided that he can self-fund $28 million and raise another $60 million.
Republican Bruce Rauner‘s win also reaffirms another pearl of wisdom: Bad always gets worse. If Illinoisans thought that state government was incompetent and leadership was dysfunctional under the Quinn-Madigan-Cullerton Democratic regime, they ain’t seen nothing yet.
The 2018 campaign for governor started on Nov.… Continue Reading
Written by John Biver
Glenn Poshard’s pension is high — and he’s not alone. Here’s an excerpt from an article in the Chicago Sun-Times by Chuck Neubauer, Patrick Rehkamp and Sandy Bergo of the Better Government Association:
One of the big problems Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner will face is what to do about the state’s public pension crisis.
He doesn’t need to go any farther than a member of his own transition team, Glenn Poshard, to get a close-up look at some of the factors fueling the crisis.
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Written by Michael Medved
You’ve heard the nonsense: Republicans swept the nation because turnout in the midterm elections was shamefully low, with people of color staying home and allowing a surge of old, angry white males to dominate the contests in state after state.
This narrative may make Democrats feel better about the outcome but it bears no connection whatever to facts readily available through exit polls and Election Day tallies.
First, and most obviously, the overall voter turnout wasn’t that bad.… Continue Reading
